When you think about the environmental changes around you, you conceive barren and parched lands in the future.
Perhaps, many people envision a dark veil in their mind—a definite end to the world where nothing remains.
Messages conveyed in an incomplete manner about the looming dangers and the state of the environment have created a flawed distribution of opinions, making it seem like we can only understand the future as either completely intact or completely devastated, unable to recognize anything in between.
Despite this fact, we have numerous examples around us that demonstrate how the environment truly manifests. The recent incident of wildfires in Canada’s forests, which led to smoke clouds reaching New York, is the most recent and startling event.
Similarly, in every winter season, the Indian farmers put fire on the rice husk across the border, but the smog effects to Lahore and Gujranwala every year
Therefore, if you attempt to explain what a weather crisis feels like, you are not alone. With the abundance of information available around us, it would be easy to believe that a weather crisis will bring the world to a complete halt.
The one segment of society believes that environmental devastation is inevitable due to increasing volume of pollution. They firmly acknowledge the weather crisis but believe that regardless of the outcome, the world will be doomed. Hence, they are not actively working towards saving the environment.
If we genuinely want to fight against a weather crisis, we need to ensure that people truly understand what it is. In this regard, we need to liberate messages from mere numbers and science, and instead, base them on stories that can inform people about reality.
This work should be done through mediums that hold central importance among people, whether it be the media or literature, theater, or other forms of art that engage in conversations with individuals already present in the next aisle.
It is true that our interaction with catastrophic conditions will be through weather crises, even though our interaction has already occurred before, yet we are still alive.
We may consider ourselves not responsible because it is an issue that we cannot handle ourselves, but regardless, an environmental crisis is a reality that we all have to face.
From floods in Pakistan to wildfires in forests and heatwaves worldwide, people are living through weather disasters and surviving with the help of communities and mutual support.
The truth is that if we don’t respond immediately to the need of a climatic crisis, we ourselves will be responsible for the devastation. However, it will not all suddenly come to an end.
In climatic destruction, it feels like a series of crises for public health. Food scarcity, large-scale migration, major disruptions, and much more. But billions of people can still survive through community care, just as humanity has survived every crisis in history.
Surviving in climatic emergencies is climate action, and even if nothing else, we will survive by taking care of each other.
No matter how difficult the problems may be, they do not matter in the end. They eventually come to an end.